Scope and Contents Note From the Collection: This collection consists of an eight-page reprint of a speech that Robert Hopkins Hatton gave in the U. S. House of Representatives on February 8, 1861. It documents Hatton's opinion that secession from the United States would cause "our fair land [to be] scourged and blighted as by the hand of an angry God." Among the methods Hatton proposes to avert war are repealing personal liberty laws, amending the U. S. Constitution to prohibit the abolition of slavery, and resolving the question of...